Christmas Eve Traditions and a Step by Step Tutorial by Leonie Neal-Dawson

Merry Christmas Eve to all of our Scrapping Clearly family. 

Leonie Neal-Dawson with you today. 

It's Christmas Eve 2017 and I'm sharing a scrapbook layout with my 2016 Christmas Eve photo!

For many years now I have been taking a picture of my family of six on Christmas Eve.

I try to find different ways to photograph us all but it gets harder and harder each year to think of something new and with three teenagers, and a tween, cooperation as you can imagine is quite a feat!

Hence last year there were no faces just the six of us standing in our Santa Sacks. No need to worry about who is smiling, whose eyes are closed etc.

Do you take an annual Christmas photo? Or have any little Christmas traditions in your family?

I think they're fun and these are the types of memories that stick in my mind when I think of family events.

I've prepared a step-by-step showing the process involved in creating my background for you below.

I began by sketching some trees on Bazzill Marshmallow cardstock. I knew I was going to be adding ink and wet mediums to my page so I wanted a thick cardstock that would withstand lots of wet mediums

and not end up too buckled.

I started adding some colour with different shades of Distress Ink Stains.

Just tapping them inside the boundaries of the trees I had sketched. I used Peeled Paint, Bundled Sage, Shabby Shutters, and Cracked Pistachio. I wasn't too happy with the immediate result and knew that more layers were definitely needed so I added some gesso with a sponge and then some texture paste with a spatula.

I added some more colour on top of the gesso and Texture paste with Twisted Citron Distress Oxide Re-inker and some water to spread it over the trees. Finishing touch was with a Fude Ball pen to outline the trees.

This pen is fantastic to use over mediums like texture paste, ink and gesso.

My photo has been matted on papers from the Bella Blvd Illustrated Faith collection. 

More Distress stains were used to add some colour to the sky, and the tree trunks were coloured with a quick smudge of brown Gelatos.

My Christmas trees have been decorated with enamel dots from Cocoa Vanilla Studios, some sequins and wood veneer stars from my stash.

Well, that's last Christmas Eve's photo scrapped.

I wonder if I can come up with something different for todays' photo?

Wish me luck with getting those teens to cooperate!

Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year from me.

Cheers,

Leonie Neal-Dawson.

Chill Time

Good Morning Arty peeps!

Peg here today, standing in for Bernii, sharing a page sort of inspired by the mood board for December.

I got the greens right anyway, haha.

This page will be winging it's way to Queensland shortly.

 I used the divine and vibrant Dylusions ink sprays for my background on a piece of heavy weight cardstock. Then to add some more depth I inked through a couple of stencils using this awesome tool and these inkpads. I also used the same ink pads to stamp a light patch under the photos. I mounted foam thickers on white card to make them pop for my title, and added Motex journalling. The edge of the page I coloured with Distress Stain that had been applied to my craft mat. I have also used that particular mat as a gelli printing plate, it works quite well. This is my go-to sticky stuff for photos and paper.

Here is the mood board for December, I hope you can find time at this busy time of year to play along.

We love seing your creations!

Thanks for coming by

Laugh so Hard....

Hi there arty peeps.

Hope all's well with you.

I'm here today to share a fab colourful page with you celebrating a wonderful friendship made through scrapbooking and retreating. I used super bright Dylusions paints to reflect the amazing spirit and talent of my buddy Lisa.

With a base of heavy weight cardstock I applied the paint using my Gelli plate. I added a strip of Hambly transparency top and bottom, secured with some machine stitching and washi tape. I used these cute Heidi Swapp stickers to create a visual line diagonally down the page. I coloured these wood veneers with my black Copic marker for the title with some Dymo. Then embellished with sequins and a chippy heart sticker. The black and spotty edge was done with Distress Stain and bubble wrap.

Here's a close up of the Copic coloured wood veneer, I love how easy this is.

I hope you are joining us for our monthly challenges, we are now asking you to post directly to our FB albums..... Mood Board & Sketch.

Thanks for coming by,

happy crafting,

Sketch inspired layout by Tania

Hello lovely people, Hope you are enjoying a lazy Saturday morning, and maybe a sleep in if you were up late last night working on the challenges for our PINK, Girls Night In???? 

I'm here with you today, to share my take on this month's fabulous sketch, by our very own, Chloe!!! (Love her sketches!!!) Check it out:

I

I was actually inspired by the colours in this sketch initially, and then once I'd chosen my patterned papers, the rest fell into place. I'm using PINK PAISLEE, CEST LA VIE, range this month, there are some gorgeous patterns in these papers. I chose this pattern no. 11, as my background page, then added some Distress Inks to highlight the colours of the paper in the middle! I added some white circles with some Distress Stain and then did some stamping in Watering Can Archival Ink, which is a grey colour.

Before adding my photo and paper layers, I needed something to anchor the stack, the Heidi Swapp Washi stickers, (from the Memory Planner range), were perfect and I cut some of them in half lengthways to layer them up. The other papers I used for layering behind my photo were: 

Paper 03, Paper 05 and Paper 12.

To imitate the Circle swirls behind the photo in the sketch, I used a 2 Crafty Chipboard piece, from my stash, coated with Gesso and then Some white, acrylic Paint.

How about these gorgeous Acrylic Numbers from the Pink Paislee, Cest La Vie, Ephemera pack!

My title, TINY DANCER, are alphabet Thickers by Amy Tangerine, the little hashtag is from a pack of Heidi Swapp, alphabet stickers.

I love this cute little bow from Maggie Holmes, Crate Paper, Flea Market Bows!!!!

There's a sprinkling of some other little embellishments there, some gold star sequins that just seem to float around in my stash, I really don't know where they came from!!! Some cute little gold hearts from the Heidi Swapp, Memory Planner range... & some more washi stickers from Maggie Holmes.

For my journaling at the bottom of the page, I actually ruled some lines, I wanted it to look neat. I am a bit anal about neat journaling, and don't always use my handwriting on a page for that reason.

I hope you get time to play along with our challenges this month, keep your eye out for more Design Team inspiration and over on the Facebook community page too!!!

Seeya,